Files or other resources on computers around the world may be publicly available to users of other computers through the collection of networks known as the Internet. The collection of all such publicly available resources, linked together using files written in Hypertext Mark-up Language ("HTML") is known as the World Wide Web ("web").
A user of a computer that is connected to the Internet may cause a program known as a client to request resources that are part of the web. Server programs then process the requests to return the specified resources. A standard naming convention has been adopted, known as a Uniform Resource Locator ("URL"). This convention encompasses several types of location names, presently including subclasses such as Hypertext Transport Protocol ("http"), File Transport Protocol ("ftp"), gopher and Wide Area Information Service ("WAIS").
The various resources accessible via the web are created and maintained by many different people on servers located all around the world, and may be created for many different purposes. Many individuals and businesses now have their own web sites that can be visited by people "surfing" the web. These web sites typically provide information on a myriad of subjects such as sports, business, news and even community events. For example, many web sites exist which provide useful information about a particular business establishment such as office locations, customer service telephone numbers and information about the products and/or services that the business offers to the consumer.
In many cases, an individual accessing such a web site is looking for particular information such as information about a particular product. However, the individual might desire additional information about the particular product, which is not available from the web site. Typically, the individual will place a telephone call to the customer service department of the business entity to obtain the additional information. For example, the individual may want to know if an electronics store carries a particular product, such as a particular brand name television and the price of the television. Such information may not be contained in the web site and the individual may have to call the electronics store to receive the desired information. This multiple step process of searching and retrieving information from the Internet and then using a conventional phone line to call the business establishment for still more information or conducting business is cumbersome and time consuming.
In other cases, the individual may generally know the location of a particular establishment, but may not know the exact address or the name of the establishment. For example, an individual may know that there is an electronics store in their town on Route 4, but may not know the name of the electronics store. The individual may access a web site that contains information about the particular town to try to identify the exact name and location of the electronics store. Conventional searching techniques require a hierarchical step by step query approach to locate the desired information. For example, the individual may enter the address of the store, if known, or the type of store to get a listing of relevant information. However, such searching may require many steps and, in many instances, the available search queries may not be compatible with the known information. As such, the searching many require additional unnecessary search queries in order to obtain the desired information.